Mums’ ‘vicious’ assault on paramedic lands them in prison
A PAIR of Melbourne mums have been sent to jail under new mandatory minimum sentencing laws for attacking an ambulance worker.
TWO Melbourne mums have been jailed for their “vicious” drunken bashing of a paramedic who was left with a broken foot and unable to return to work.
Amanda Warren, 31, and Caris Underwood, 20, punched and kicked experienced ambulance worker Paul Judd as he and another paramedic tried to treat a patient at suburban Reservoir in April 2016.
Mr Judd has needed three operations on his broken foot and has not been able to work since the attack, although he is determined to return.
Warren and Underwood were both jailed in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday after they pleaded guilty to intentionally causing injury.
“The attack on both paramedics was unprovoked and very vicious,” Magistrate Lance Martin said in sentencing.
“In his 40 years of experience, Mr Judd has never experienced or felt fear like he did on that day.”
After considering new laws for attacks on emergency workers, the magistrate jailed Warren for eight months and Underwood for four months.
Victorian laws introduced in 2014 demand a mandatory minimum jail term of six months for anyone who intentionally injures an emergency worker, unless there are “special reasons”.
Mr Martin said Underwood’s young age, being 18 at the time of the attack, did constitute grounds for special reasons and she received less than the six-month minimum.
The case marks the first time a mandatory minimum jail term has been applied over an assault on a paramedic, Ambulance Victoria says.
“Ambulance Victoria welcomes this decision and hopes that it sends a very clear message,” emergency operations director Mick Stephenson said outside court.
“To those in the community who think that assaulting a paramedic is acceptable, it is clearly not.”
Mr Stephenson said assaults on paramedics were all too common in Victoria with about one occurring every day.
“It won’t be tolerated and Ambulance Victoria will continue to work very hard to see there is no occupation violence in our workplace.”
Underwood and Warren, who are both mothers of young children, will be subject to 12-month community corrections orders upon release from jail.
Prosecutor Nick Batten previously urged the magistrate to uphold Victoria’s new laws.
“It is incomprehensible why anyone would assault an ambulance officer,” he said.
“These are not authority figures. These are helping figures. This was an assault lasting some duration ... that requires denunciation by the court.”
The court heard Underwood suffered abuse as a child, has a six-month-old child whose father had recently died, and was working hard to turn her life around.
“She has gone to such lengths, for a person who had the childhood she did, to become a different person,” her lawyer Sharon Lacy said.
